With my strong son-in-law last week-end, we tried to use some galvanized iron piping as a conduit, a covering or protection, for a plastic water hose to go inside of, under a pathway. The two ends looked ok, like this picture above.
There was a slow bend in between. But the plastic hose could not go though the bend. When I looked more carefully down the pipe, I saw why. There were large "growths" of thick hard rust bulging from the inside at the slow bend. Like these hard growths:
See the pipe below & the left pipe of the two below:
The growths may be able to be filed away with a metal file, but they certainly were not soft or squashy. They could not be brushed aside. The plastic garden hose could not be forced through by a strong man.
They have become a picture for me of "growths" that stop conduit or piping from taking stuff inside them
On the net I found these 2 additional pictures of what can happen:
And now I recognize my own experience of this kind of blockage, slowing, stopping a flow of largess, or strength, or patience, or capacity to live above, or just "wear" other people's rudeness, or ignorance, or judgementalism, their lack of thoughtfulness & commitment to building others up. I knew it to be starting to happen with a few classes at a school recently when I have done casual teaching. I called out to God for help, and let him flow his love through me. I felt like I was too shrivelled, or inflexible, or foolish to go forward with these children in this state. "Sin" can be seen as simply any growth within us that stops the flow of love from God's enormous supply. As the city council water supply can be shut down by rust reactions in a steel pipe, when the galvanizing has been compromised. My "growths", my weakenings, my reactions seem to have the power to stop the creative love that keeps the world existing. God, thank you for sending Jesus to save me from these, my "sins".
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